Pride by Michael Eric Dyson

January 19th 2006

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quoted in an excerpt from Pride by Michael Eric Dyson that was published at Beliefnet.com over the weekend. In the excerpt, Dyson discusses Dr. King’s balancing act between patriotism and belief in the values of the country, and nationalism and the pride and arrogance of the “my country, right or wrong” mentality.